New Delhi, August 8
“In this country you need huntering (flogging) to make you work,” the Supreme Court today said while venting its anger on babus and top police officials for their failure to respond on an issue related to punishing errant cops who refuse to register FIRs on public complaints.

“Is this Ramrajya in this country...So this is swaraj. This is the concept of swaraj,” said a bench of Justices B.N. Agrawal and G.S. Singhvi, while lamenting the attitude of the top bureaucrats and the frequent complaints of citizens that policemen do not register FIRs promptly.

While granting two more weeks to chief secretaries/DGPs and police commissioners to file their response, the apex court warned that if the top bureaucrats fail to respond, it would direct their personal attendance in the next hearing.

The bench gave vent to its anguish as barring Uttar Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh, no state or Union Territory had so far responded to its July 14 directions.

On July 14, the bench had ordered that a citizen whose his/her FIR is not registered can approach a judicial magistrate for direction to the police officer concerned to register the FIR.

However, even after a direction from the judicial magistrate if the policeman concerned failed to register the FIR, then he/she should be jailed and appropriate disciplinary action should be initiated, the apex court had said in its earlier directions.

While giving the directions, the apex court asked the states and UTs to file their replies within three weeks and posted the matter to August 8. But on Friday, when the matter came up for hearing, only UP and Arunachal Pradesh had filed their response while the others failed to respond which provoked the bench to pass the observations and fresh directions.

The bench regretted that even though it had posted the directions on the Supreme Court website so that it was accessible to all officials concerned, yet the later choose to ignore its directions.

“It is a pathetic state of affairs that only two states, viz, UP and Arunachal Pradesh, have responded and other states did not bother to file their responses. Some of them have simply engaged their counsel, who are appearing in court, and as usual, they have made prayer for time to file responses,” the bench observed. The bench passed the directions while dealing with a habeas corpus petition filed by Bhola Kamat whose 16-year-old daughter who was abducted by some persons in a land dispute. — PTI